14 month old and speech - should I be concerned? (older child has speech delay)

[leavemealone]

Should I be concerned that our 14 month old does not have any words yet? Not "mama", "daddy", "cat", "baby", nothing. He babbles and has said things that sound like 'dada', but he doesn't look at us and say "mama" or "daddy". We do have an almost 3.5 year old who doesn't talk yet and who is in speech therapy. It was at our older child's 15 month appt that the dr expressed a bit of concern, but said to wait until 18 months and see what's going on. Well, nothing had changed at 18 with the older boy. Our older child would babble and make sounds, but had not really progressed past that until after age three. It was only after he started the public preschool and private speech therapy that he began to make some progress, but the older boy is still way behind his age group. I don't want to wait that long again if there might be a problem. Am I being paranoid b/c of the older child's speech delay or should I have the younger child checked out?

[APToddlerMama]

I wouldn't be overly concerned, but having worked in EI and also as the parent of a very speech delayed kiddo, I would look at starting the process to get him an eval. Typically EI is looking for a child to have at least one word by 12 months. It can't hurt and at the very least, you'll have an early start if he does need services. Good luck.

[leavemealone]

If it wasn't for our older child's speech delay, we probably wouldn't be concerned about the 14 month old, but the older child is coming up on 3.5 years old and still doesn't talk. He's made a little progress but is still way behind his age group. I will see what Early Intervention has to say.

[askew]

In my area EI will not typically see kids for speech until they are closer to 2. I would see what they say by you, especially given your older child's delay. I think there is a big range of normal, but my ped says if not 10 word by 18 months then look into an evaluation.

[marieangela]

I've been wondering about this, too. Most of the people with my daughter's genetic disorder seem to have speech problems. She is almost a year old and doesn't consistently make any sounds, let alone words. We have a physical therapist and a developmental therapist come to our house on alternating weeks. The next time I see the developmental therapist, I'm going to ask how soon we can start working on her speech. It may just be something that the developmental therapist works with her on until she is old enough for speech.

[sbgrace]

Because of the older sibling I would likely want to get the ball rolling if that's possible. This stuff is pretty genetic in my experience. If you can't do formal therapy maybe look into Hanen programs or something similar you can do at home. Might be good to do it because it could help both kids perhaps.